On February 24,
2015, Metrolink Train No. 102 collided with and
abandoned work truck and trailer at a grade crossing
in Oxnard, California. Over the years, there had
been multiple train collisions and many fatalities
at the
Rice Ave. and Fifth Street crossing.
News reports at the time indicated that there
were fifty people on that train. Of those aboard,
twenty-eight sustained injuries, including four
transported from the scene in critical condition.
One of the walking wounded exited the toppled second
coach under his own power, only later to discover
that he had a broken neck.

Another
critically injured passenger,
Mr. Marc Gerstel, was a regular rider on the
early Metrolink train from the Oxnard Station to
Union Station in Los Angeles. An adjunct
professor of dental technology, Gerstel would ride
Metrolink and then catch the Red Line to Los Angeles
City College. On a normal day, Gerstel could depart
Oxnard at 5:39 AM, arriving in Los Angeles at 7:14
AM. Absent any traffic, a similar
trip by automobile would take about the same
amount of time. If attempted during morning commute
time, the automobile trip might take twice as long.
Only Metrolink’s speedy train service allowed
Gerstel to live in Ventura County and work near
Downtown Los Angeles.

In 2005,
Metrolink admitted that fixed worktables in its
Bombardier bi-level coaches had added to
injuries in a Glendale Metrolink collision earlier
that year. Although the 2005 Glendale collision
resulted in eleven deaths, no one except Metrolink
knows how many of those fatalities resulted from
human impact with fixed worktables. In 2005,
Metrolink also knew that the Bombardier bi-level
coaches were prone to decoupling in a collision. In
a derailment, the uncoupling of coaches can
exacerbate the effects of a collision, allowing
coaches to both whip around and to topple over.

In
2008, a Metrolink train collided head-on with a
Union Pacific Freight train in Chatsworth,
California. With twenty-five deaths, the Chatsworth
collision
became the deadliest in Metrolink history.
Led by a diesel engine, all three of the coaches in
that train were of bi-level design, manufactured by
Bombardier. The collision was so violent that the
Metrolink diesel engine telescoped rearward into the
first coach, tearing it open and igniting a fire. At
Chatsworth, the third and fourth Bombardier bi-level
coaches remained upright and on the rails. Luckily,
for the passengers in those two coaches, the
collision happened on a curve, thus sending both
engines and the first coach to the outside of the
curve.

News
reports at the time indicated that at least one
fatality resulted from human impact with a fixed
worktable. In that case, first responders discovered
that the worktable nearly severed the victim’s body
upon impact. The National Transportation Safety
Board (NTSB)
Final Accident Report stated, "The tabletops are
trapezoidal in shape, approximately of uniform size
and manufactured of a high-pressure laminate without
any form of safety padding". Although damage to the
first coach was catastrophic, "the second passenger
coach from the locomotive did not sustain severe
structural damage". Although the NTSB report does
not state a reason for the single fatality
experienced in that coach, the "dislodged or
separated work-station tables" were the likely
cause. If not a human body being thrust against it,
what else would dislodge a worktable in an otherwise
lightly damaged coach?

On
Page 62 of the same Final Accident Report, NTSB
sidles up to the extant dangers associated with the
worktables installed in all Metrolink Bombardier
bi-level coaches. The report states, "As configured,
these one-piece tabletops are at abdomen height for
a passenger seated at the table, thus placing that
person at risk of sustaining serious abdominal
injury in the event... of a collision impact. As a
result of its investigation of the 2002 collision of
a Metrolink commuter train... in Placentia,
California, the NTSB determined that two Metrolink
passengers had been fatally injured as a result of
abdominal injuries resulting from impact with a
workstation table". The Final Report indicated that
"Existing Metrolink coaches will also be retrofitted
with (crash energy management) features". To date,
however, Metrolink has not retrofitted the
worktables on any of its Bombardier bi-level coaches
still in service. In plain English, for at least
twelve years prior to the February 24, 2015 Rice
Ave. collision, Metrolink knew that its Bombardier
bi-level coaches contained killer tables, yet did
absolutely nothing to curtail their use or to remove
them from service.

With
ridership plummeting and an unenviable safety
record, Metrolink moved forward to spend a reported
$263 million on new Hyundai-Rotem rolling stock.
With enhanced Crash Energy Management (CEM) and
“frangible worktables”, the Metrolink purchase
included fifty-seven new cabcars and sixty bi-level
coaches. Later in 2010, Metrolink purchased twenty
more Hyundai-Rotem bi-level coaches of similar
design. By June 2013,
Metrolink claimed to have "replaced almost all
of its aging rail cars".

In 2012, Metrolink published its five-year “Metrolink
Fleet Plan”. Buried under the section titled
“Current Metrolink Inventory”, the document
discusses “Metrolink’s established benchmark in
safety, upgrades and passenger comfort”. Using
language so dense that I had to read it several
times, Metrolink indicated that ongoing fleet
replacement plans preclude upgrading the older
Bombardier bi-level coaches. They cite “Guardian
(Hyundai-Rotem) layout and table type for CEM
benefits versus retrofitting Sentinel (Bombardier)
with energy absorbing tables”. In plain English,
that means that Metrolink will continue to utilize
obsolete Bombardier bi-level coaches with killer
worktables until their eventual replacement with new
Hyundai-Rotem coaches. Since there is no currently
published plan for Metrolink to purchase additional
Hyundai-Rotem "Guardian" coaches, the obsolete
Bombardier bi-level coaches will continue to roll
for many years to come.

As
stated in Metrolink’s own 2012 Metrolink Fleet Plan,
coaches that have traveled over one million miles
should be retired. Still, as of 2012, Metrolink was
operating sixty Bombardier “trailer cars” and
twenty-eight “cab cars” which averaged 1.3 million
miles of service. At that time, another twenty-three
Bombardier cabcars and coaches averaged 950,000
miles. By 2016, almost every Bombardier cab and
coach in the Metrolink fleet will be functionally
obsolete. When you consider Metrolink’s refusal to
retrofit existing Bombardier bi-level coaches with
safer worktables, Metrolink’s own “benchmark in
safety” sounds more like “gross
negligence” to me.

Under normal circumstances, Marc Gerstel rode in the
third or fourth coach, facing toward the rear.
Typically, the third and fourth coaches in Train No.
102 were of the newer type, manufactured by Hyundai-Rotem. After a collision, the design of the
Hyundai-Rotem coupling systems should keep all
coaches connected and heading in the same direction
of travel. That morning, Gerstel needed to make a
quick transfer to the Red Line at Union Station.
Therefore, Gerstel rode facing forward on the
Metrolink train, sitting at a worktable in the
second coach, which was an obsolete Bombardier
bi-level model.

Before
sunrise on February 24, 2015, Metrolink Train No.
102 traveled across the Oxnard plain. According to
the NTSB
Preliminary Accident Report, it approached the
Rice Ave. grade crossing at fifty-six miles per
hour. Upon seeing the work truck and trailer
disabled and lodged on the railroad tracks, a
student engineer at the controls of the Hyundai-Rotem cabcar engaged the emergency brakes and
sounded the horn.

Seated at a worktable on the right-hand side, upper
level of the Bombardier bi-level coach, Gerstel
heard the brakes engage. Seconds later, Gerstel felt
and heard the
impact of the cabcar with the work truck.
Immediately, his laptop computer flew forward across
the worktable. Instinctively, Gerstel reached in
vain for his laptop. As his coach passed the
collision site in the darkness, Gerstel saw a
fireball outside the window. Hearing steel wheels
riding across the concrete grade crossing, Gerstel
knew that his coach was off the rails.

Although
it decelerated rapidly from fifty-six miles per hour
to a whipping and rotating halt, the size of the
Bombardier bi-level coach created a slow-motion
effect. Another passenger rode through the collision
while clutching one of the vertical stanchion poles
inside Gerstel’s coach. Weeks later, he described to
Gerstel what he had observed. He said that all of
the passengers appeared to fly vertically out of
their seats. In this case, vertical was only in
reference to the inside of the coach. In reality,
the Bombardier bi-level coach had decoupled at both
ends. As the cabcar whipped to the left, the rear
end of the coach whipped forward and to the right,
while simultaneously toppling on its side.

During his recuperation, Gerstel has pieced together
his own personal chain of events. In May 2015, he
told me, “As I reached forward to grab my laptop, I
was pulled sideways out of my seat, in a backward
motion. I went airborne and struck what I assume was
the worktable across the aisle. When the train
slammed down on its side I sustained serious
injuries. I believe that I hit my original worktable
and/or another object. My neck was severely
fractured and my back vertebrae shattered. At
impact, I blacked out... so I cannot attest to how
many times I hit any of the worktables. I also had a
head injury, so I must have tumbled like tennis
shoes in a dryer”.

In
the newer Hyundai-Rotem coaches, the edges of the
worktables are five or six inches thick. During
impact, their design allows them to break away from
their moorings, thus cushioning the blow to any
human body that may impinge upon them. In the older
Bombardier bi-level coaches, the tops of the
worktables are of "high pressure laminate" design.
Designed in the 1970s, the worktables look like a
fortified version of a kitchen table from that era.
The worktables feature a single support column that
is through-bolted to a plywood sub-floor. The
opposite end of each tabletop is firmly attached to
the interior wall of the coach. Unintentionally,
Bombardier worktables will sacrifice a human body
before they will accept the dishevelment of a coach.

Although his mobile telephone was permanently
deformed during impact with various immovable
objects in the Bombardier bi-level coach, it still
functioned after the crash. With its new and
interesting shape, one wonders what objects it hit
as it cushioned its wearer, Mr. Marc Gerstel. Did
his mobile telephone "absorb the bullet" that might
otherwise have taken his life? Weeks later, during
Gerstel’s long and arduous recovery, his supervisor
and mentor at Los Angeles City College visited him
in the hospital. After the dismembered train came to
a thunderous halt, Gerstel lay crumpled, broken and
unconscious. There, in an overturned, obsolete rail
car filled with hazardous worktables, he awoke.
Regaining consciousness just long enough to
voice-text his boss, “Train
wreck. Cancel class.” was all that he said.

Having
embarked from Oxnard on Metrolink Train No. 102 many
times before, Gerstel had observed
Senior Engineer, Glenn Steele, but only from
afar. With his forty-two years experience and
number-one ranking on the Metrolink seniority list,
Steele had his pick of any assignment within the
Metrolink system. Always up for a challenge, he
often chose the Ventura County Line to polish his
skills. In deference to the engineer's privacy and the
gravity of his task, Gerstel had never approached
nor spoken to Steele.

After the accident, paramedics transported both
Gerstel and Steele to the intensive care unit at
Ventura County Medical Center (VCMC). For the
next several days, lying injured and awake in his
ICU bed at night, Gerstel often heard medical
professionals attending to Steele. More than once,
caregivers attending to Steele encouraged him to
breathe. Twice during his stay at VCMC, Steele's
heart had stopped. Four or five days after the
collision, Steele was transferred to Cedars-Sinai
Medical Center in Los Angeles for specialized care.

A
few hours short of one week after the collision,
Senior Metrolink Engineer, Mr. Glenn Steele
succumbed to his injuries. According to Darren
Kettle, executive director of the Ventura County
Transportation Commission, instead of running to the
back of the train to save himself, Steele stayed in
front and apparently laid on the brakes much longer
to try to protect the fifty passengers on board. As
the Ventura County Star newspaper reported that day,
“Four were critically injured, including Steele. Of
the other three, only one remained hospitalized
Tuesday, in stable condition at Ventura County
Medical Center”. With a broken neck and shattered
spine, that remaining patient was husband, father,
teacher and friend, Mr. Marc Gerstel.